July 30, 2014

My thoughts on this season's Bachelorette finale.

I have been a long-time fan of the Bachelor and the Bachelorette, and have been a fan since Brad Womack's second go-around as the Bachelor. It is the only reality television show that I keep up with. However, I want to say upfront that I don't exactly take the show seriously... I am a huge fan of Bachelorette spoiler blogger Reality Steve and since Ben's season I have been reading the spoilers ahead of time. Reality Steve's insider commentary on the show is absolutely hilarious and he points out so many of the ways in which this show is not "real" at all. But at the same time, I am still a girl with a romantic side who enjoys seeing the dates and travel destinations each season, and the fashion blogger in me loves seeing the girls' outfits or the Bachelorette's outfits, depending on what the season is! I do always route for the couple that gets together at the end to stay together as well. I was thrilled when both Ashley and JP and Sean and Catherine got married and loved watching both of their weddings on TV. Random Bachelorette fun fact: former Bachelorette Emily Maynard attends the same church that I do in Charlotte! She also met her husband there (they didn't meet on the show), and they actually spoke during a sermon this past February. :-)

I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the finale of this past season with Andi as the Bachelorette. (As per usual, I read Reality Steve's spoilers that were posted a few months ago, and they were pretty much 100% accurate for every episode! I enjoy reading the spoilers because I feel that it actually makes me watch the show more closely and helps me to analyze certain contestants more then others earlier in the show.) But anyways, the point of this blog post isn't to talk about my love of Bachelor(ette) spoilers, I wanted to talk about my thoughts surrounding Nick, one of Andi's final two guys, and his very dramatic exit from the show.

There have been a lot of heartbroken final two contestants in the seasons of the Bachelor and Bachelorette that I have watched, but I don't think that I have ever seen anyone as heartbroken on the show as Nick. To say that he was devastated that Andi didn't choose him would be the understatement of the century. Since the Bachelorette wraps up filming about three-ish months before the finale, usually runner-up that appears at After The Final Rose and confronts their lead has at least come to terms with everything by that point, and oftentimes they report that they are already in a new relationship. Well, not the case for Nick.

The After The Final Rose (ATFR) special showed footage of how Nick tried repeatedly to contact Andi after the Bachelorette filming ended, but she kept refusing to talk to him until ATFR. At the actual show last night their conversation exploded very quickly, and lead to Andi saying quite bluntly that she never loved him, in which he responded with a tough question: why did she sleep with him on their Fantasy Suite date if indeed she never actually loved him?

Their was a lot of social media response to this remark from Nick, and many people thought that he was way out of bounds for saying that on national live TV, especially when the show mentioned he had tried to contact her prior to through both a letter format and in-person. But I on the other hand, say props to Nick for bringing that up! And here is why:

Yes, it's true that many of the lead Bachelors and Bachelorettes do sleep with many of their contestants during the Fantasy Suite dates, not just the person that they intend to stay with after the show is done. Former contestant and Ben's season Bachelor winner Courtney Robertson even addressed this in her recent autobiography I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends (a really fun read for fans of the show by the way!). Morally I do not approve of that at all, but that's another rant altogether. Irregardless of my own Christian beliefs on premarital sex however, there have been Bachelors and Bachelorettes who have either had the same views as me or who have chosen to abstain from sleeping with their contestants in the Fantasy Suites for other reasons. Bachelorette Emily wanted to set a good example for her daugheter since she was a mom when she did the show, and she is now happily married to a Christian guy that she didn't meet on the show. Bachelor Sean was a Christian and born-again virgin who said from the start that he wouldn't use the Fantasy Suites for those purposes, and he is now happily married to Catherine, who he proposed to at the end of his season! While I'm sure that the culture of being on a show like the Bachelor(ette) can put pressure on the lead into using the Fantasy Suites for sexual reasons, past examples like this show that they don't always have to be about that (and good things can come from avoiding that!).

I don't believe that either Nick or Andi are Christian so I wouldn't expect them to have Christian views on premarital sex. But I do believe that it is a valid thing for someone, Christian or non-Christian, to only want to sleep with someone who loves them. Clearly that is what Nick wanted. He seemed to understand that Andi couldn't say "I Love You" until the proposal time, so he had to sense her "I Love You" through her body language, actions and other words. And I will say that right up until when she ended things with him, Andi did seem pretty into him!! I don't fault him for misinterpreting that.

Another reason that I say props to Nick for what he did in ATFR is because Andi had three opportunities to use her Fantasy Suites, and she only used two. She decided to send Chris, the fan-favorite farmer from Iowa, home before giving him the key to the suite because she wanted to be honest with him about how she didn't have the same feelings for him as he did for her. I applauded her for doing that, and I thought they had a very tasteful break-up as far as the show was concerned. Now why couldn't she have treated Nick with the same decency if she claimed in ATFR that she "knew she didn't love him"?

I also want to say quickly that I wasn't a big Nick fan through the whole season!! If you're reading this post then you probably think that I was rooting for him the whole time. Being someone that reads spoilers I knew that she would end up with Josh all along, and I actually was a huge fan of Josh at the beginning! In the early weeks I thought he and Andi were absolutely adorable together, and I couldn't wait to see where things lead. Nick wasn't a favorite of mine for most of the show- but I will say I gained a lot of respect for him in Fantasy Suite date week and of course in the finale. The whole situation really struck a chord with me so much that I wanted to blog about it! (But his fashion choices during the whole season were still very, very questionable.)

I also felt a personal connection to this situation a little bit because during my freshman year of college I almost dated a guy who reminded me a lot of Nick. When I told him that I didn't actually have feelings for him and thought we would be better either as friends or just to move on from each other, he did not react well and reacted kind of similarly to Nick on the show!! (Just to clear things up: the furthest physically that my thing ever got was me kissing him on the cheek so slightly different. ;-) ) We eventually met in person several months later before I transfered colleges to talk about what had happened in the fall when I "dumped" him, and the closure was good. I actually blogged about it last summer but looking back on the post it is WAY too wordy and kind of embarrassing so I don't think I am going to share the link. ;-)

Anyways, I am happy for Andi and Josh! It is something else how they both lived in the same city and didn't meet until doing the show and travelling around the world together. I can't wait to see who the next Bachelor is- stay tuned to Reality Steve because he will most likely spoil it before it is released!

3 comments

I LOVE this post! I completely agree about Nick asking why Andi slept with him. She appeared to be into him, and Nick is so right by saying they did fiance-type stuff in the Fantasy Suite. He totally had the right to ask that question-- he asked her TWICE if they could meet before ATFR to discuss things. SHE put him off and so it's her fault that he asked that. If she didn't want him to bring that up on live TV, she shouldn't have done those things with him.

My younger sister just got me into the show, and I completely agree with you. It was so typical celebrity of Andi to pick Josh. I think Nick was a much better guy. I think it's dumb that I even care about this, but thanks for the post!!

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